How your Tab can Benefit Environment and Business!

The advancement in mobile technology has made a great stride in Point Of Sale (POS) sector which helped the retail businesses evolve rapidly in terms of serving customers and automating business.

Gone are the days, when shop owners and sales executives at POS counters used to make customers wait in queues to pay the amount for the merchandise, provide them hand-written bills, offer substandard service and have no means of reaching customers remotely.

With the advent of internet and mobile technology, POS manufacturers have come up with new POS devices which are not only handy, easy to use, custom-made and rugged but also cost-effective and packed with hordes of features to enthuse both retailers and customers.

Using tablet POS, retailers can now say that they contribute something to the environment. With internet-enabled mobile devices, people are getting their utility bill payment details and receipts for the retail purchases straight into their mobile and/or email boxes. Retailers can send payment receipts and purchase bills to customers’ mobile phone or their email accounts thereby avoiding the usage of paper, printed material and consumables such as ribbons, ink, etc used for taking printouts.

Tablet POS has immense usage in various business verticals including grocery retail, restaurants, hospitals, transportation, logistics, wholesale businesses, furniture showrooms, electrical and electronic stores, utility stores, to name a few.

In restaurants, table attendants and floor managers can take orders using Mobile POS or Tablet POS hence cutting down the usage of paper used for either take down order or taking printouts using electronic POS devices, which are bulky and highly inconvenient to use.

Orders taken electronically from the table can be directly passed to the kitchen instantly hence cutting down the errors and delay. Customers can also have the option of paying through their credit/debit card at the table itself and receive the payments directly to their mobile phones or email accounts.

Businesses adopt Mobile POS, IPad POS or tablet POS as it reduces the efforts of managing the whole business. With tablet POS in hand, which can be connected to main computer and several other similar devices as well, one can do multiple functions simultaneously in real time.

Apart from serving as billing and payment devices, these smart devices can be used for inventory management, staff management, payroll processing, customer relation management, extracting various analytical reports for business enhancement and support highly complex sales tax, service tax or GST calculation and payouts. Everything can be carried out in simple and accurate way without wasting time and energy in Excel spreadsheets and graphs to tackle sales and inventory.

Almost every iPad and Android POS apps available in the market are packed heavily with various features to manage multiple stores in real time and generate sales figure at any given point of time thereby saving human involvements and reduce errors which can cause financial loss to store owners.

Mobile iPad POS is a robust and flexible system which can run every aspect of a business from sales to inventory, expansion and marketing in addition to provide customers sophisticated shopping experience with sense of trust, security and loyalty.

How Technological Innovations Transformed Point-Of-Sale Systems

Technological innovations are inevitable for any industrial sector for growth and operational efficiency, and the ever-booming Indian retain sector is no exception to this dictum.

Point of Sale (POS) which forms the backbone of all retail operations has seen a sea-change over the recent years providing retail businesses the much advanced POS systems which can do multiple functions automatically thereby increasing operational efficiency, reducing error, cutting cost and increasing profits.

Modern POS systems are widely used in food services and restaurant businesses, grocery retail stores, super markets, healthcare, hospitality, food and beverage outlets, health and beauty salon, entertainment, utility shops, to name a few.

What is POS?

POS is a computerized system through which business managements can keep track of inventory levels, revenue streams, cash flows, accounting books, credits and debits, and several other mundane functions which, if carried through manual function, will be complex, error prone, involve more manpower and time consuming.

POS in retail industry

POS systems are seen immense usage in retail industry. With high level of credit card, debit card and cash charges flowing through POS systems at any given time, retailers need to have highly efficient and effective system to manage such activity. Every single rupee passes through a store’s account book can be easily tracked through a POS system.

However, the efficiency of any POS system depends on the quality of POS software which the retailers use for their business environments.

Features of the POS systems

POS systems can be designed for large-scale retail business applications across multiple locations. Medium-sized enterprises such as a supermarket or electronic and electrical store can manage up to 5 Lakh Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). More so, POS systems can be customized to suit your SKUs and operational needs. POS software can effectively manage both front-end and backend operations of your store business.

While on the front end, POS systems can manage your sales, pricing, qualities and inventory, on the backend they are capable of performing all rudimentary and advanced functions. POS systems can also be used to manage and schedule staff, monitor in and out time, purchases, operational efficiency, pay role management, accounting and individual transaction details.

Customer management is one of the familiar features of any POS system available where customer names, addresses, contact numbers, email IDs, buying pattern and transaction details are stored, either in local computer system or on the cloud. Such information are used by retailers to engage customers using different kinds of CRM activities.

Major Benefits of POS Systems

If you take restaurants for example, POS system has simplified the communication issue faced by staff doing different functions. Waiters and kitchen staff can now exchange communications quickly much to the satisfaction of customers as they get their orders quickly.

Effective inventory management can reduce purchase overlapping, lessen wastages, improve planning and up functional efficiency. An effective POS system can also be used for payroll preparations, which saves money in terms of human resources. Certain POS terminals can perform much advanced functions such as profit and loss, internal auditing, income statements, balance sheets and tax related activities.

For retail businesses which are planning to have POS systems to enhance their operations, it’s imperative to evaluate the cost criteria with respect to having obsolete POS systems and highly advanced and user-friendly modern POS system.

Why Electronic and Electrical Retailers Need Efficient POS Systems

Handling customers at any retail store during peak hours/seasons can be a daunting task for counter staff, workers and floor managers. Specially, when you are dealing with electrical or electronic components or devices, you have thousands of inventories to account for, and manually processing them will be time consuming, tedious and error prone which can prove pricey to store owners.

Automation and digitization have helped retailers selling electrical and electronic items to adopt Point of Sale (POS) technology to run their business operations smoothly and efficiently ensuring customers get excellent shopping experience.  

POS technology has evolved significantly over the years. Gone are the days when retailers provide hand-made bills for the goods purchased and manually prepare daily sales reports and inventory in excel sheets. But things have changed now. Automation has been ruling the retail businesses and store owners have no qualm in adopting this technology which offers them multiple benefits with little cost.

For electrical and electronic stores, one may require a computer system with POS software integrated with barcode scanner, thermal printer, cash drawer (optional), barcode printer, card reader and a payment terminal.

Let us discuss about the advantages of having advanced point of sale system for your retail store.

POS as efficient queue buster

POS devices with suitable retail software can help counter staff bill your customers fast and efficiently thereby reducing the time customers spend in queues to pay the bill. There are hand-held mobile POS (MPOS) devices available in the market, which can make your store staff bill customers on the spot. These devices can be connected to internet and hence stores can offer door delivery services too by providing MPOS devices to delivery personnel to collect payments (cash or card) at customer places.

Inventory tracking

These are the most important functions of a retail store where every retailer would want to automate and avoid complex manual operations. Since advanced POS software now become affordable, retailers selling electrical and electronic items can get tailor-made POS software to suit their business size and needs. When sales happen, the POS machines automatically adjust the inventory of the products sold and provide instant report to the store managers or owners about the current count of all the components.

Get Instant Reports and Plan Business Better

Not only this, store managers can get several vital information regarding sales such as peak sale duration, high and low demand products, daily/weekly/monthly/yearly sales reports, real time sales and inventory positions of multiple stores, sales target achieved by store executives, customer footfalls, customer buying pattern, most valued customers, etc. Such information can help them plan better for their business growth and provide improved services to their customers.

CRM initiatives

Apart from better sales and inventory tracking operations, POS devices can help store owners engage with customers and improve sales. POS devices controlled by suitable POS software can send discount coupons to customers during  special occasions, offer them spot discounts when they visit store, send them mails and SMSs regarding new arrivals and discounts on new products, etc.

So investing in POS can be wise decision for store owners who want to surge ahead with the competition with competent peers.